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What is the musical alphabet?
What are notes?
The musical alphabet is a lot easier to learn than the normal alphabet. It only includes 7 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F and G. These are known as the natural notes.
What are flats and sharps?
Since there are actually twelve notes in western music, we need a way of expanding that alphabet a little. We do that by using flats and sharps. A flat means lower in pitch by one note and is notated using the symbol ♭. Sharp means higher in pitch by one note and is notated using the symbol ♯. In the table below you can see all the notes written out, starting at C.
Once you get to the last note in the sequence, you simply start again with the same note names but in a higher register or octave. Don’t worry about the terminology for the time being!
What are the notes on the bass guitar?
For a bass guitar with 4 strings, the following diagram shows you where these notes are located on the neck. The notes on the left of the diagram are the tunings of the open strings. For a bass guitar, that is E, A, D and G. To orient yourself, the E string is the bottom line of the diagram, the thickest string and the uppermost one when you hold the bass.
This diagram only shows notes for the first five frets of the bass guitar because, if you look at the diagram, you can see that when you reach the fifth fret, the fifth note is the same as the next open string. For example the fifth note of the E string is A and A is also the next open string.
When it comes to musical notation, the diagram below shows the notes as they would be written on a staff (the 5 horizontal lines). The funny shape on the left hand side of the staff is the bass clef and it tells us that the notes are written for people playing in the bass register.
If we want to notate a sharp or flat, the appropriate symbol is simply added to the note.
Next steps
If you’d like to learn more about the musical alphabet, members at Scott’s Bass Lessons have access to the Beginners Learning Pathway (Level 2) that will teach you everything you need to know about the musical alphabet.
To become a member, just go to the course page and click on the ‘free trial' button. This course alone is worth the price of a year’s membership, but you will also find a HUGE number of other courses as well as gain access to our community where you can ask questions of other members and our pro bass mentor team.
